Building an eCommerce Website? [Which Shopping Cart Works Best?]

In the last few years, eCommerce market has become widely spread. You must be aware of the most popular e-commerce shopping carts available today. Choosing the right Shopping Cart for your eCommerce website can be pretty challenging.

What is a Shopping Cart?

A Shopping Cart is a software that keeps track of items a visitor picks to buy from your eCommerce website until they proceed to the checkout. It gives online shopping customers a great way to gather a list of items for purchase at checkout, together.

We have listed the top most used Shopping Carts and what makes them different from others.

1. Shopify Shopping Cart

Shopify is great for selling clothing, furniture, and digital books. It is the leading online shopping cart when it comes to building your own online store.

Key features of Shopify Shopping Carts-

Pros

Extremely easy to set up

Clean and well-designed templates

Over 100 payment gateways supported

Optimized mobile shopping cart checkout

Free SSL certificate included

Cons

Shopify costs money- monthly & per transaction fee

Built with its own language, Liquid, so some learning curve involved

Sometimes difficulty in migration to other platforms

2. Magento Shopping Cart

Magento is one of the best & leading eCommerce platform for selling online. Magento is well known for its flexibility to customize and to extend the platform functionality.

Key features of Magento Shopping Carts-

Pros

100% Customizable

No monthly fee & no transaction fee

Well-designed templates available

Well-Optimized for SEO & Reporting

100% Flexibility

Feature-rich solutions

Has free version with robust features

Hundreds & thousands of free & paid plugin available to scale-up

Cons

High Costs for Upgrades

Need programmer to upgrade

Lacking robust Customer Service

3. Prestashop Shopping Cart

PrestaShop is another popular online shopping cart to sell online. It is widely used for small, medium or large ecommerce as their choice for setting up online stores.

Key features of Prestashop Shopping Carts-

Pros

100% Free & Open-Source

No monthly fee & no transaction fee

Easy to set up and maintain

Suitable for multi-language websites

Lightweight-In-Nature

SEO Friendly

Cons

Expensive modules

Minimum scalability

Poor Design of theme and product catalogue

4. OpenCart Shopping Cart

OpenCart is one of the most popular e-commerce development platforms right now. OpenCart supports multiple store setup and maintains as a core feature.

Key features of OpenCart Shopping Carts-

Pros

Easy to manage

No monthly fee & no transaction fee

Multi-Currency/Language

Well-Designed Admin Interface

Automatic Image Resize

Cons

Limited choice of modules for scale-up

Limited analytics and reporting features

Requires developer for enhancements

Lacking important features in core engine

5. WooCommerce Shopping Cart

If you are having a WordPress website, then WooCommerce is a perfect shopping cart option for you. WooCommerce allows you to sell anything, beautifully.

Key features of WooCommerce Shopping Carts-

Pros

100% Free

Easy to set up and maintain

Responsive out-of-the-box

No monthly fee & no transaction fee

Automatic updates for great new features

Strong add-ons availability to scale up

Cons

Need to learn both WordPress & WooCommerce platforms

Reliable plugins are bit expensive

Requires a developer to maintain

Security is a concern

These pros and cons are only the summaries of the many features that each platform offers. However, it doesn’t mean that any of these shopping cart platforms should be used or avoided. The different shopping carts may fit the needs of your business and technical environment available.